June 20 (Bloomberg) -- For the man who just became Spain’s
newest employee, work is now a priority.

King Felipe, sworn in yesterday after waiting until the age
of 46 to get his current position, told lawmakers that the
country must redouble its efforts to find jobs for the young.
With Spain plagued by the second-highest unemployment rate of
the European Union, that theme builds on unfinished business
from the reign of his father, Juan Carlos.

“We have to send a message of hope, particularly to the
youngest,” the new head of state said yesterday in Madrid.
“Solving their problems, and especially finding work is a
priority for society and for the state.”

The former king said he wanted to abdicate to let a younger
generation repair the scars left by Spain’s six-year slump. That
may prove a challenge for Felipe as the same lawmakers who
proclaimed him monarch also plan to scrap a youth council
created with Juan Carlos’s blessing when Spanish democracy was
five years old, a victim of cost cuts enacted by the 59-year-old
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

“There is no real effort to tackle the problem,” said
Carlos Alcaraz, a 27-year-old native of Alicante in the
southeast of Spain, where the youth jobless rate is 29 percent.
He is retraining to be a teacher after struggling to find work
as an architect. “A new king isn’t going to make a
difference.”

Jobless Rate

As Felipe settles down at his new desk, the unemployment
rate for people under 30 years old in Spain reaches 43 percent
compared with a 25 percent general rate as the younger
generation, raised during an era of prosperity after Spain
joined the European Union, aren’t benefiting from the same labor
market conditions as their elders. About half of those who do
work have a temporary contract. that is twice the average rate
for the working population, a situation that keeps 75 percent
living with their parents, data published by the youth council
show.

“There is no sign of the renovation the King has called
for,” said Luis Ortiz Gervasi, a sociologist at Pompeu Fabra
University in Barcelona. “On the contrary, the government is
scrapping bodies such as the youth council or the women’s
institute which are precisely pointing at the main social
inequalities which are getting worse.”

Rajoy, who started his political career two years before
the youth council was created in 1983, is slashing it as part of
the deepest austerity measures in Spanish democratic history.
It’ll be replaced by a less costly structure that’ll be
democratic and independent, said a Health Ministry spokesman who
asked not to be named in line with government policy.

Youth Empowerment

“There is no real political will to empower Spanish youth
with democratic tools,” said Alejandro Quiroga, a political
scientist at Newcastle University in the U.K. and Alcala de
Henares University near Madrid. “The youth council isn’t so
much an expense as a critical voice being silenced at a time
when the main plan for young Spaniards is that they go abroad to
work, as happened under the dictator Franco’s regime, rather
than invest in areas that would generate jobs for them.”

Hector Saz Rodriguez, 30, the youth council’s president,
expects the new structure to drop campaigns such as lobbying the
government to replicate successful initiatives in northern
Europe as it implements a European youth employment program,
rather than extending prevailing inefficient methods.

In an address to the nation on June 2 to explain his
decision to abdicate, Juan Carlos, 76, said that “a new
generation is rightly demanding to play the main role” in
forging the future, as his generation had done in “another
crucial moment” of history.

Hidden Reasons

Juan Carlos chaperoned Spain’s democratic transition in the
late 1970s after succeeding the dictator Francisco Franco, who
enabled the second restoration of Spanish monarchy four decades
after overturning the country’s Republican regime.

“Generational change is a sensible argument to hide the
many reasons for which Juan Carlos has lost his people’s
support,” said Javier Del Rey Morato, a political
communications professor at Madrid’s Complutense University. His
prestige was damaged by reports of an affair, corruption
allegations against his daughter Princess Cristina and her
husband and an African hunting trip that emerged at the peak of
the crisis riling Spaniards suffering from the downturn, he
said.

Juan Carlos’s abdication has boosted support for the
monarchy in Spain, according to a Sigma Dos poll published on
June 9 by El Mundo newspaper. The survey showed that 73 percent
of those questioned believe Felipe will be a good king for the
country.

‘Extreme Poverty’

Meanwhile, economists forecast the country’s unemployment
rate will remain little changed by 2016, at 24.2 percent,
according to a Bloomberg News survey published this week. Even
so, Bank of Spain Deputy Governor Fernando Restoy said today
that he sees positive signs in Spain’s labor market.

“The job situation in Spain is difficult and it’s nothing
new,” said Jose Garcia-Montalvo, an economy professor at Pompeu
Fabra University in Barcelona. “It won’t improve without a
structural and substantial change.”

In Alicante, Alcaraz says young people can only count on
loved ones. He makes about 600 euros ($818) a month from giving
private lessons, teaching languages learned during his studies
in Germany and the U.S., and will supervise a holiday camp to
keep up his income during the summer. “If it weren’t for our
families’ support, we’d be faced with extreme poverty with the
kind of wages we’re earning.”